SpaceX is planning to send three tourists to the International Space Station (ISS) next year. The trip is part of a partnership with the Houston-based start-up Axiom Space. Private citizens have flown to the ISS before, but they have all launched in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. This trip, which will use a SpaceX Falcon 9 […]
NASA is enlisting whatever help it can get to make sure its crewed Moon and Mars missions go smoothly, and that might include help from schools. The agency is running a new round of its Moon to Mars Exploration Systems and Habitation Academic Innovation Challenge that encourages university students to study and develop spacefaring tech. […]
SpaceX has won the launch contract for NASA’s 2022 mission to explore the mineral-rich asteroid known as Psyche, the space agency announced, including launch services and other mission-related costs valued at $117 million remarkably low for a mission of this scale. The Psyche mission will use a Falcon Heavy rocket, which will launch from Launch […]
NASA’s “InSight” lander touched down on the surface of Mars, with the goal of examining the Red Planet’s interior. InSight has been in operation for around three months, and it’s already turned up some interesting results. According to reports, InSight has detected hundreds of “marsquakes”; planetary tremors that behave similarly to the ground-shaking natural phenomena […]
SpaceX and space tourism agency Space Adventures are partnering on a mission to send four private citizens into orbit on a pioneer excursion. The announcement comes after SpaceX sent their Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station for the first time in March 2019 and then successfully tested a simulated rocket failure on Jan. […]
SpaceX successfully launched its fifth batch of Starlink internet satellites via a Falcon 9 rocket. Unfortunately, it did not manage to land the rocket’s booster as planned. The booster was expected to land on a drone ship, called Of Course I Still Love You, approximately eight minutes and 24 seconds after launch. Instead, the booster […]
The SpaceX Crew Dragon, which is to be the first spacecraft to carry humans to orbit from American soil since 2011, has arrived at its Cape Canaveral launch site. NASA and SpaceX are already preparing the vehicle for its first flight manned test and will put it through final testing and prelaunch processing over the […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made major headway towards making space travel more accessible and efficient thanks to reusable rockets, but until now its focus has been on unmanned flights. Then last month, Musk said the company was planning for a launch sometime in Q2 of the year. Ars Technica’s Eric Berger reports that first crewed […]
The next major steps in SpaceX’s plans for true spaceflight will be a 12-mile-high test flight. Sometime between March and September, the company plans to launch its Starship suborbital test vehicle from Boca Chica, Texas. The Starship will travel to an altitude of 12.4 miles, or 20 kilometers. SpaceX will then attempt to land and […]
SpaceX has completed a major milestone in its quest to carry humans to orbit. The private spaceflight firm has successfully conducted an in-flight test of Crew Dragon’s launch escape system, with the capsule jettisoning itself from the Falcon 9 rocket and splashing down in the Atlantic soon afterward. As expected, the host rocket broke apart […]
Boeing’s spacecraft landed safely at New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range at 7:58AM Eastern, making it the first US-made, crew-ready capsule to touch down on solid ground. Previous capsules from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs all landed in the sea. This capsule didn’t have any humans aboard just test dummies, but this is still […]
SpaceX has already moved on to manufacturing its next generation of ‘Mk3’ Starship frames, but the original model Elon Musk stood in front of two months ago popped open during an apparent “pressure test” at the company’s Boca Chica, TX site. In slow-motion, it appears that fluid started bursting from the sides first. In response […]
The US Air Force’s X-37B is going to break its own record for time spent in orbit, but it’s now clear by how much. The mysterious Boeing-made space plane has landed at Kennedy Space Center after 780 days in orbit, comfortably surpassing the earlier record of 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes. That’s more […]
During an update on the SpaceX Starship program, Elon Musk showed off a brief clip that explained part of the plan for using these vehicles to reach Mars. It involved a Starship in orbit around Earth, meeting a similarly-sized vehicle to refuel before it goes on the long trip to another planet. Musk has long […]
Today India attempted to become only the fourth nation to successfully soft-land on the surface of the Moon. That mission appears to have failed, when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost contact with its Vikram lander at an altitude of 2.1km above the lunar surface. The space agency has said only that it is […]